EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime 575
astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."
Mandatory comment. (Score:5, Funny)
Commencing Primary Ignition....
Standby...
Standby...
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You forgot the...
Beeeoooouuuuwwwww!
Sound effect...
Re:Mandatory comment. (Score:5, Informative)
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Who on earth rated this offtopic? Turn in your nerd badge on your way out.
Do NOT make a frickin laser beam joke (Score:3)
Alright folks, listen up: This is not an appropriate time for a shark joke. This is very clearly an opportunity for an Alan Parsens or Preperation H reference.
Anybody caught making a Frickin' Sharks joke will be permanently labeled a virgin.
Re:Do NOT make a frickin laser beam joke (Score:5, Funny)
Anybody caught making a Frickin' Sharks joke will be permanently labeled a virgin.
If that happens, can I have all that child support I've paid refunded?
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Alright folks, listen up: This is not an appropriate time for a shark joke. This is very clearly an opportunity for an Alan Parsens or Preperation H reference.
So... you're tired of these motherfrickin' lasers on these motherfrickin' sharks?
Re:Do NOT make a frickin laser beam joke (Score:4, Interesting)
I take it that mutant Sea Bass are still OK?
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Ill-tempered sir, ILL-tempered. Ill-tempered sea bass will eat you enemies, bad-tempered sea bass will jump out of the tank and eat your minions in a flash of pyrrhic defiance
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Looks like time to dust off the Cheech and Chong jokes then.....
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Umm, this is the time for Real Genius jokes, not shark jokes.
Results how? (Score:2, Insightful)
If spacetime is ripped apart, where and when will any observations of any phenomena they are studying occur?
Re:Results how? (Score:5, Interesting)
You raise an interesting point. How exactly do we detect the absence of spacetime? Presumably if it's ripped apart, either there will be gaps, or somehow we'll make more of it.
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Don't panic.
Eddy's in the spacetime continuum.
He'll give us The Answer.
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That was Deep Thought. Eddy's answer was infinity minus 1.
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You raise an interesting point. How exactly do we detect the absence of spacetime? Presumably if it's ripped apart, either there will be gaps, or somehow we'll make more of it.
Oh come on, we know the answer to this. Hellish beings from another Universe will come charging through the gap causing explosions, terror and Micheal Bay movies.
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Don't be ridiculous. Evil twins of local people will come through the tear in space-time, except for one which is actually a good twin (since its double in this universe is evil), and will cause all kinds of pandemonium. When everyone finally figures out how to banish these evil doubles back to their mirror universe, they'll try to send the one evil guy from this universe back with them, but he'll fool everyone so that they send the good one instead.
Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boy. (Score:2)
"Hellish beings from another Universe will come charging through the gap "
And they'll all be named John.
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explosions, terror and Micheal Bay movies.
No need to repeat yourself.
Re:Results how? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, far more energetic phenomena-- gamma ray bursts-- have been studied to observe the effects their travels through the fabric of space-time on the way to Earth have had, and the results have been pretty mundane. Even for ridiculously high-energy gamma ray photons, the fabric of the universe behaves as being essentially smooth and respectful of general relativity. Maybe we'll see something a bit wilder given a chance to take a closer look, but to describe "pushing some particles apart so we can see them" as "tear apart the vacuum of space" is a bit of an exaggeration.
Re:Results how? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm just hoping that the results of this experiment will provide once and for all, a definitive answer to the ages old question of:
If three astronauts are flying over the Gobi Desert in a canoe, and they crash land, how many pancakes does it take to shingle a doghouse?"
I've only been able to narrow it down to two possible answers:
Three, because ice cream has no bones.
or
Nine, because watermelons can't use night vision goggles.
And even then, I am only about 70% sure the answer is one of those. This experiment with the great big lasers could reveal a completely different answer.
The most important question: (Score:4, Interesting)
In the event of an alien invasion, can we point it upwards?
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Wrong, the most important question is can we mount the freaking laser onto a sharks head?
The Death Star (Score:3, Interesting)
The combined power of 10 separate lasers would be focused down to a very small volume, creating conditions more extreme than in the center of our sun.
So they'll essentiallly be turning the Earth into the Death Star
And we feel good about letting Europeans man the switch?
Will they be wearing dark suits with funky helmets?
Re:The Death Star (Score:4, Funny)
...turning the Earth into the Death Star ...dark suits with funky helmets
Aaaagh! I just had a Dick Cheney flashback!
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See the thing is, after having had our continent torn asunder by two world wars, a couple of genocides, decades of Soviet occupation of the eastern block, followed by being dragged into a hornet nest in Iraq following faulty US intelligence, most people over here are so fed up with the whole war thing that we only agreed to help the Libyans deal with Gaddafi after he started using the air-force to bomb innocent protesters.
However, if you prefer I guess
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"I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one."
- Dr Rosenberg, head of ELI research, February 2015
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F-that. I want a lightsaber. This will be money well-spent.
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Consider how much energy there is trapped in normal atoms just waiting for a trigger to release it, somehow a high short term concentration of photons doesn't seem all that much to worry about. More interesting might be to build up a really, really high concentration of electrons in a super conducting toroid, especially as that build up would produce measurable affects at a distance. A solid electron field.
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No kidding- if we could just stop the US from starting all those World Wars, we could finally get some peace.
Re:The Death Star (Score:4, Insightful)
That's point. While America fight a war on terrorists, the rest of the world are doing criminal investigations on organized crime and terrorist groups. While American fight obesity, the rest of the world seeks solutions to a healthier lifestyle to reduce obesity. While American fight a war on drugs, the rest of the world arrest criminals and put them to trial.
This concept of "fighting wars" on everything is very American (not that wars are not fought somewhere else by other groups, don't get me wrong). This concept is also very hyped by the American medias.
Of course, you are partly right, once those "wars" go beyond the American borders, the become "world wars", although it would be pretty naive to compare those modern "wars" with what was previously called "world word".
There have been investigations and actions taken against terrorist groups and organization long before America somehow declared war on terrorism on 09/12 some 10 years ago.
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The CCTV thing is purely a British phenomenon, not European. Britain isn't really part of Europe. It acts like it when it suits it, and it acts separate when that suits it. They weren't even invited to the recent talks about the crisis with the Euro, Greece, etc. Britain's really a lot more like the USA than continental Europe.
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Yes, but they took it as a major snub. After all, the crisis threatens the existence of the entire European Union, and Britain is (population-wise and economy-wise) one of the larger members of the EU. So it makes sense they'd want to at least be present during any big meetings, even if they haven't yet changed to the shared currency.
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Those buggers would prolly turn this project in to one of their toy to be used to destroy the whole mankind, amrkans have that sort of habit you know.
Oh come on. Obama already apologized for destroying the world last Thursday. Why are you guys still holding a grudge?
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The french are developing an antimatter bomb?
Extreme "light"... (Score:2, Insightful)
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They need to call it "light" because politicians are stupid enough to ban if they call it "radiation" - although a powerful enough laser won't be visible light, but UV radiation...
I can see how that conversation would go down:
Scientist: We're going to rip a hole in the space-time continuum using radiation
Politician: Wold on!
Scientist: Wait, did I say radiation? I meant "light". And oil! A mixture of light, oil, and freedom!
Politician: Now that's what I like to hear!
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So this is when... (Score:3)
... we get invaded by the Strogg?
--
BMO
Except for the rip a hole in spacetime part... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another terrible headline, but the article is partly to blame. This isn't about ripping a hole in space time, it's just about putting energy in the vacuum so a bunch of virtual particles become real particles.
P.S. THE DEVICE WILL GO ONLINE IN 2012 AND END THE WORLD!!! AREN'T I CLEVER? PULL MY FINGER!!
Ripped spacetime (Score:3)
Damn! I hate it when that happens.
OOhh OOhh Mr. Kotter! (Score:2)
Hey, beats a shark joke. Let's mine 70s TV for a change.
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Dear Mr. Kotter
Please allow retroworks to be on Slashdot.
Signed,
retroworks' Mother
It's all fun and games... (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought that was why we existed?
Research Moneys! (Score:2)
As a Canadian, I wish our government would partner with the US to fund super awesome science mega-projects like this. Seriously guys, would it be so hard to scrap one aircraft carrier in exchange for something useful?
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Why doesn't your government instead partner with the Europeans, instead of pointlessly hoping for the Americans to do something useful instead of only things that increase corporate profits? Heck, you'd make a lot more progress partnering with the Chinese than with the US.
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Because Europe is far away which means we won't get many jobs (shipping costs) out of joint ventures with Europe, no jobs means no votes means no money. If that sounds retarded, it's because it is. With the US we can usually get some kind of make work project to keep the politicians happy.
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Shipping costs aren't that much, depending on what you're shipping and how much. If you divide up the project and make the Canadians responsible for some significant-sized part, that can be shipped when complete.
Think about it: we North Americans buy stuff from the Europeans all the time: ships, marine diesel engines, large industrial equipment, cars, etc. The fact that they're in Europe doesn't make that much of a difference. China's far away too, but that doesn't keep us from buying stuff from them, ev
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As a Canadian, I wish our government would partner with the US to fund super awesome science mega-projects like this. Seriously guys, would it be so hard to scrap one aircraft carrier in exchange for something useful?
Well it would be for Canada; we have no aircraft carriers.
Okay, how about each Canadian give up one Molson's per day? That'd add up pretty fast...
Did I miss something? (Score:2)
Did I miss something, but why is Europe getting all the cool new science toys? :-(
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Because science is Anti-American, remember?
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Because they're smart enough to invest in science, rather than pouring most of their tax revenue into resource wars to benefit a few corporations.
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Cause America keeps starting all the cool new Middle East wars and have no play money left over?
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"They don't have any Republicans."
Tell that to Ireland.
Truth stranger than fiction. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm guessing...plaid and flannel.
Fuhck yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)
$1.6 billion is a bargain to have space and time ripped up. The money won't be missed anyway.
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Come to Us, Great Cthulhu (Score:4, Funny)
Haven't these people ever watch The Mist? (Score:2)
Or read From a Buick 8? Or The Langoliers?
I really don't want to rip a hole in space-time.
Oblig. Futurama (Score:2)
Professor Farnsworth: We tore the universe a new space-hole, alright. But it's clenching shut fast!
Hmmm not enough power (Score:2)
Lets see a petawatt is 1 x 10^15.. Our star (sol) has a surface power of +/- 4 x 10^25 and it hasn't rent space time asunder yet that I know of, but hell I could be wrong. 200 PW is only a little more then the power of the sun that hits the earth. The sun runs at its power level continuously and they think they can do that in a couple of fempto seconds? I think not.
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Of course there are many events in the Universe far more powerful than this, and good old spacetime survived them all. The article states some heavy bullshit.
Slashdot: Anti-science for ignorant pseudo-nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
First the shear amount of dumb laser jokes is astounding. It seems very few people bothered to read any of the other posts or bothered to consider that maybe someone else on Shashdot had ever seen Austin Powers. Or Star Trek. Or your favorite SF series here. Real herd behavior in action.
Next, the number of people whining about 200 PETAWATTS!!!!!! was really sad. Are the posters hear actually that ignorant about the concept of instantaneous power values and pulsed power systems? I am surprised by this level of technical ignorance.
Also, does anyone seriously think that a project of this size would be approved without an air tight argument that the experiment will operate in a domain where there are likely to be measurable results? Is it even vaguely possible that physicists picked "200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second " by guessing? They have a well reasoned case to do the experiment, and part of this is a way to measure the results. But many of the post deride the practicality of the experiment, and even make specific statements that it won't work and that key measurement components are nonexistent. All based around a badly written publicity piece and their extensive personal knowledge of ultra high powered lasers and the mathematics of virtual particle production in the ground state of the space-time vacuum.
The worst and most puzzling part is the shear amount of hostility shown towards science. Assuming that it pork spending, saying it useless, that it can't show anything interesting, that the resources would be better spent somewhere else. All without a shred of logic or reference to any external source. This is the kind of anti-intellectual crap I expect from Fox News, not Slashdot readers. All I see here is a few true nerds surrounded by a bunch of fakes who either express their ignorance directly or try and hide it by making a ridiculous hostile comments.
Re:Slashdot: Anti-science for ignorant pseudo-nerd (Score:5, Insightful)
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power of this fully operational battle station! Fire at will commander.
I've never understood what Will did that everyone always wants to fire at him.
Re:Ok. That's one research field going too fast. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ok. That's one research field going too fast. (Score:5, Informative)
someone accidentally caused a nuclear fission without taking proper precautions at a lab
That happened, at least twice. See the WIkipedia entries for Harry Daghlian, Jr [wikimedia.org] and Louis Slotin [wikimedia.org].
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google "demon core"
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It is quite a scary sounding procedure. If our atmosphere catches fire and every life form from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammal is instantly incinerated then at least we will know who to blame.
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Yep, we're playing with fire. And as we all know, humans were better off without fire.
Re:Ok. That's one research field going too fast. (Score:4, Informative)
Noone is ripping anything. It's just a sensationalist article. Energy concentrations far bigger than this happen in the Universe.
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*All* particles are mathematical abstractions.
Re:but but but virtual particles... (Score:5, Informative)
The electric field started out as a model of how charges interact, then he noticed that waves in the electromagnetic field would produce energy transfer at a speed that was the same as that of light.
Einstein's theory of relativity was just a model of how gravity works, a gravitational field was just a mathematical tool for predicting the motions of objects, and black holes were mathematical curiosities that probably did not exist in reality. Today we have observed binary star systems gradually changing their orbits as they lose energy due to gravity waves. Frame dragging of space itself surrounding the earth has been empirically measured in satellites, and several black holes have been found by astronomers.
Quantum mechanical wave functions were models for how elementary particles work, and the Dirac equation predicted negative energy solutions, suggesting each particle had a double of opposite charge. A few years latter the positron was discovered.
Circulation in fluid dynamics is a mathematical quantity used in predicting the flow of fluids. As it happens it cannot simply disappear without viscosity, leading to the concept of vortex tubes, the most famous example of which is a tornado.
Perhaps the greatest prejudice to new ideas is however found in mathematics. Whenever new numbers have been discovered, how have we named them? Negative, irrational , imaginary ... As it happens complex numbers are inherent to the laws of quantum mechanics. You would have a very hard time trying to explain why matter sticks together without them.
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Even in the name- they are "virtual" because they are just mathematical abstractions. nothing more.
Except the effects of virtual particles are observable. Hawking radiation, and small black holes boiling away both should exist if virtual particles are real. The casimir effect, (The pushing together of parallel plates in a vacuum) is due to virtual particles. The casmir effect has actually been measured. I don't think Hawking radiation has been yet.
I do agree with you that a theory should be falsifiable,
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It was my understanding that Hawking Radiation had actually been confirmed and that it was caused by virtual particle pairs being created and one of them passing the event horizon and the other escaping.
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here you go [youtube.com].
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I'd have thought so. But the home page of the actual facility says "A European facility opening new avenues to reveal the secrets of matter on ultra-short timescales" so I'm guessing the Discovery article isn't very accurate.
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The answer is not what is given. The answer is:
1. Pork 2. Some researchers get media attention 3. Some researchers might get to play with the laser.
The whole idea is so lame. Please, give the money to a real condensed matter physicist, or a chemist or a materials scientist please.
I'll feed ya, Anonymous Coward! :-) Why is it lame? Potentially (and admittedly it will eat giga-watts of electricity) it could confirm some very fundamental elements of theoretical physics. That, to me, is worth every giga-penny. Advancement of fundamental knowledge is money well-spent. Do you have something against science on the frontiers? Just askin'.
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Why is it lame?
Because the shark question has not been considered. I would fucking pay extra taxes to see space-time ripping laser sharks.
Re:The article asks "Why?" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not the original AC, but I'll give you a two part argument for it's being lame.
1. The energy density for this device, while pretty spectacular, is still way, way below the range where current competing theories predict exotic results. This has been a problem for projected particle accelerator of the future designs as well, since at least before the Superconducting Supercollider design that was to be built in Texas was canceled by the US Congress. One of the reasons we have gone ahead with new accelerators even though we (as a species) are still tremendously short of achieving the energy levels needs for more direct tests is a few 'work arounds' have been theorized. These are phenomena that are in the range the machine at CERN or others can reach, but that theoretically may be indirectly influenced by Super-symmetry or other theories we can't test more directly. Without some relatively indirect test like this, the Uber-laser still won't be nearly powerful enough to accomplish anything. So, either there's some sort of indirect prediction from one of the String theory variants, or Super-symmetry, or some more exotic theory, and that indirect prediction is down in the energy range that this thing achieves, or they are basically just gambling on something completely unexpected showing up. Since the article doesn't really explain what that indirect, inferential prediction might be, It's seems more likely than not there isn't a specific one. (Of course, it's possible the interviewer didn't get everything into the article.).
2. The article also states that the energy achieved by this device will be equal to a temperature greater than the center of the sun. That sounds impressive, but we've seen some much more energetic events in astrophysics. Lots of Nova/Supernova variants, neutron star related events, and quasars involve energy densities way beyond both the center of our sun and this laser device. We should at least possibly have seen some evidence for the same kind of effects as this widget is supposed to possibly produce by studying existing astronomical events. While that's not absolutely always a good guideline, I know, in the absence of an indirect prediction based on existing theory, I'd be willing to gamble somewhat if the device aimed to mimic the energy densities of some astrophysical event and could point to theories from there as evidence for this 'hole ripping' or 'cosmic hernia' effect. It's not uncommon for sub-atomic physics to take cues from Astrophysics and Cosmology, and vice-versa, but that too doesn't seem to be happening in this case.
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May or may not be Pork, but there will be Cake.
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You store it up. No doubt there are all sorts of subtleties, but basically all you need is a frickin huge capacitor.
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200 petawatts is easy enough to produce - it's 200 joules over one femtosecond. (Chances are the pulse is somewhat longer than one femtosecond, but there are two ways to produce large power numbers - large amounts of energy, or very short timeframes.)
Re:But where do we get the power? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the idea is that you relatively slowly charge up some kind of energy bank, eg ultracapacitors or something, using relatively low power. And then you discharge the bank very very fast - so you get 200 petawatts output, for a trillionth of a second, and then the energy banks are drained and need to be recharged.
It's possible that the energy capacitance is actually an inherent part of the laser physics rather than being stored electrically. I'm not really sure what the details are.
But, 200 PW for one trillionth of a second is actually only 200 kJ total energy if I've done the math correctly - ie about 9% of the dietary energy content of a Big Mac. This would not actually take very long for the world's total electrical generation capacity to deliver. :)
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It's a bit of playing with numbers. Lets say that the worlds production of drinkable water is 1 litre an hour. If normally, the world only uses 9/10ths of that litre, there is 100mL left over that can be saved. Now, if over the course of ten hours, that 100 mL is put aside into a tank for an experiment. The experiment then squirts a high pressure jet of water that uses the entire litre that has been saved up in a mere second. The experiment can be said to have expended 3,600 times the Earth's water producti
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Yep, vacuum is nothing.
Henrik Casimir called, he wants a word with you. [wikipedia.org]
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Henrik Casimir called, he wants a word with you. [wikipedia.org]
(And, before anybody replies, yes, I know, he's calling from the Great Beyond.)
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The universe tunneling to a lower energy state would destroy all existing structure in the universe instantly. They wouldn't be annoyed at all, they would simply cease to exist like everything else we know.
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And it would propagate across the universe at the speed of light so they would get little warning of it except when the wave hits them then [carrier lost]......